


After the Fact

by theshalashaska



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: M/M, Rewrite, reupload, the better version returns in all of its glory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 07:12:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5325257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshalashaska/pseuds/theshalashaska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When curiosity burns, there's little one can do but follow it. A rewrite of the dreadful original.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Almost too easy, wasn’t it?” She looked up from her book to face him properly. “The company let them take Morgan out with the trash.”

“Tough world.” He had no desire to engage Jessica any more than he had to. He’d set the glass cylinder on the table when he walked up, and that meant his work here was done. 

“You file the report on this.”

He turned and moved a few steps away from the table.  Now comes the part where she doesn’t let me leave.  Jessica didn’t disappoint. He stood still and listened to her next words. The quicker he answered, the sooner he’d be able to leave, and his patience was already beginning to wear thin.

“By the way… Why save Parker?”

The better question would be to ask why  not , but he wasn’t about to tell  her  that. Raymond’s reasons for saving Parker Luciani were to be kept to himself, locked away somewhere deep in his mind where even he would have trouble finding it. He trusted Jessica less than their employers, too. He would tell her as little as possible.

He shifted to face the table, slowly and deliberately, face impassive as he lowered his shades.

“I have my reasons,” he stated simply.

It wasn’t much, but he still had to give her something. Perhaps she knew, or on some level suspected. Jessica’s expression told him nothing of her knowledge, a perfect poker face; it was nothing less than he expected.

“The BSAA isn’t as useless as I thought. Things could really heat up.”

So she didn’t know. Or she didn’t care. Raymond couldn’t help the spread of relief at her diversion back to the situation. If only for a little while, his weakness would be safe. He replaced the sunglasses over his eyes and made to leave for the last time.

“Indeed. The fun’s just getting started.”

He threw a wave behind him, the last interaction he’d have with Jessica Sherwatt for a long time.

*****

Parker was back on duty. He still wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that, but it gave him something to do, so he didn’t complain. For the most part, he felt fine. Nothing more, nothing less. Just… fine. Not counting the nightmares. He still woke up in a cold sweat most nights, hearing distant screaming in his ears and convinced the room around him was on fire.

And he often thought of his friends. Jill had stopped by nearly every day. She didn’t poke and prod or treat him like a figurine of glass. They merely talked. Sometimes about work, sometimes about  nothing at all. She didn’t avoid talking about the Zenobia, but she wasn’t insensitive, either. It was a nice balance.

Chris, too, came to the hospital. He didn’t visit long and rarely stayed more than an hour. He had a tendency to bring up the mission and freeze once he realised what he was saying. A brief and awkward silence would ensure before a drastic change of subject to some inane thing, and Chris wouldn’t stop talking until he left. Parker was fine letting him make all of the words. 

Sometimes, other well-wishers from work would drop by. Often, he saw flashes of vibrant, red hair; in the doorway, across the hall, outside (if he was standing up). He wondered how many had been real. Had they even  been  Raymond? And if he’d come, had he forgone a disguise? 

Parker had found, over the course of his hospitalisation, that free time meant Raymond.  The spy . It was when Jessica shot him that Parker had understood. Shock, then fear, then acceptance. She’d known it was Raymond all along. Perhaps he had broken code, or maybe he was a rival.

Whoever’s side he was on mattered little; he had still save Parker. Truly an enigma, if ever there was one. It certainly hadn’t been to pay a debt. Letting him die would’ve been easy, and Parker should’ve been dead, anyway. Parker had pulled his own bruised body up from water and through fire. He had limped from the wreckage, vulnerable to even the lightest tap. 

When he’d found Raymond--or had Raymond found him?--he was far past the point of fatigue. He was dying, running on fumes that were practically gone. The combination of strain from swimming, and walking, and pain caused him to collapse. It was then that he had given up. For a brief moment, as he’d stood after finally escaping the water, there had been hope.

Walking had slowly diminished that hope. Falling had destroyed it completely. Raymond would not leave him. He forced Parker to walk, even as fire now scorched him on the inside, he made him walk. Told him to “keep going,” they were “almost there,” he could “do this.”

Parker didn’t remember much other than Raymond’s voice or the firm hand on his shoulder and arm around his lower back. The push to move forward. He hardly remembered when he woke up on the beach. They escaped the Queen Zenobia together--that much he knew for certain. After the fact, he didn’t know, discounting the probably hallucinations.

He’d decided not to ask after the agent, and no one offered up the information. He would wait until he was fully mobile. Now that he was, he didn’t know what to do. Should he look for Raymond, or would Raymond look for him? Somehow, he knew the other man had already found him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may find this vaguely familiar, or know exactly where it came from. That's because this was originally posted in the late August of 2013. Since then, it's been nagging at me how lacklustre it was, and so I rewrote it with the intent of fixing all four chapters before posting. Well, the first chapter--this one--has been sitting in a binder in my room since April 27th of this year, the second perhaps halfway finished, and I decided it was time to just get off my ass and type it. It's a really bad habit, I know. There are other things I've had since 2013 that I never posted because I'm so late to type things up.  
> Anyway, this story is one that I really wanted to redo and finish for forever, so now is the time for me to finally get it done and have some closure. I have no idea when the next chapters will be out as I am in the process of some of my Metal Gear fics, but I'll try to work on them over the course of the next month. In the meantime, I hope you stick with my to finally see the end and enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. As always, thank you so much for the feedback, and have a lovely day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Womp, another chapter. I had this one much closer to finished than I thought, to be fair, and it's been ready since the 2nd but I kept forgetting to upload it from Google Docs. Chapters 3 and 4 are guaranteed to take longer.
> 
> Also I am writing that other MGS chapter, just had a lot of stuff to do this week, so I'll get back to that over the weekend, probably.

Raymond Vester considered himself a subtle man. He was calm and collected, most of the time, and the level of secrecy he kept lent a certain mystery to his person. He gave little enough to keep others from asking too many questions, which he found was perfect for his kind of work. He felt he was justified in saying he was also not stupid by any definition of the word. Except that one thing, but that was most certainly the only exception. 

It's not stalking , he told himself.  I'm just keeping an eye on him . It was a weak attempt at a lie, even to himself. Especially to himself. He lifted the brown paper cup to his lips and took a sip of his coffee without tasting it. It was lukewarm at best, and he pretended it was more from the temperature than the time he'd spent sitting there. What was it, half an hour? 

He knew he'd driven up to the shop at 11.29, then looped around to park two blocks away.  He'd checked his (very uncomfortable)  hat for any giveaway strands of red, adjusted his glasses and collar, then slipped on his gloves. His clothes seemed transparent in the sunlight, so distance must be his only ally. He'd turned the key, and 11.36 was replaced by black. 

Across the street, a clock in another shop’s window read 12.08. In front of him, an open book rested on cold, white metal. It gave him an excuse to be here, as long as he kept pretending to read. The coffee allowed for the table. Despite the snow, there were enough people outside to warrant his being booted off the premed is without it. 

He took another sip, longer than last time. Parker sat on the side beyond the path, one table away from neighbouring the street. His back was to Raymond, but the woman's face he could see perfectly fine. She was blonde, her hair pulled back in a tight bun. Raymond recognised her as a colleague of Parker’s. 

They'd been sitting there since he drove past and we're still talking quite animatedly. The woman--who had been speaking--began to laugh, the corners of her eyes crinkling as Parker tilted his head back to laugh along with her. Raymond couldn't hear even that over the omnipresent hum of chatter that blanketed the area. He felt a flare of envy in his gut and squashed it. 

I'm just here to make sure he's safe , he reminded himself. The woman stood, and her face became apologetic. She smiled and said something, then gave a little wave. He watched her pause to listen as Parker reached out a hand and responded to whatever she said. They shook.  She's leaving, thank god . She walked on the sidewalk, away from Parker, heading towards Raymond. 

“Shit.”

He placed a gloved hand casually in front of his face and tilted his head to look at his book. His sunglasses shielded his eyes well enough, and the coffee the rest of his face when she got close. His hand shook as he set it back down. Parker turned around to look at her one last time, and Raymond froze, praying the other man would see him.  Don't see me, don't see me, don't see me.  Parker kept watching the woman, too long, he just kept  looking  and it was snapping his nerves and stinging them.  Forever passed between the time Parker stared and turned back to his own cup. 

Relief flooded his body.  Not out of the clear, yet . It was still enough. Now, Parker stood. Raymond drank more coffee; it had Been all right, not the worst he'd had. Enough to serve his purpose. The other man threw out the empty cup and crossed the street. He passed by the corner store with the clock and continued up the street. He disappeared behind a door. 

Raymond slapped the bookmark on the page to mark all of the words he hadn't read up to and dropped the book into his shoulder bag. He made a show of finishing the coffee, the slung his bag over his shoulder and meandered over to the trash can. Nobody looked at him. He dropped it in amongst the waste and followed Parker’s path across the street. The door belonged to a bookstore, and as Raymond approached, he made another stupid decision; he decided to go in. 

*****

Parker stood before the sale shelf by the glass. The bell behind him tinkled, and in the glass he saw a man enter with his face turned away. Vaguely, he recognised the man from Starche’s, sitting at a table Lilah passed on the way back to her car. It was nice to catch up, even if most of their time was spent talking about the Zenobia. Lilah was pleasant, but talking to her had tired him. And that man… Something else about him was familiar, but he had moved towards the centre of the store where Parker couldn't get a good look at him. 

He resumed his perusal of the shelf.  It's probably nothing.  He saw Raymond everywhere. This could simply be another imagined familiarity, another false lead. He wished it wasn't. 

The other agent--former agent?--had become something of an obsession. Perhaps it was because he'd never had the chance to thank him, or because he never saw him and it was now imperative that he satisfy this insistent curiosity. He supposed it could be a kind of hero worship, too, if not something else entirely. 

Parker wasn't naive, of course. He hadn't ruled out the other possibility.  Raymond was certainly attractive, but Parker found a lot of people attractive. It was more than just that, more than just a desire for casual conversation, if only he could get in contact. 

The problem was that no one would tell him how to get in contact in the first place, and so it went unresolved and he saw faces in windows and mirrors and bookstores that weren't really anything at all. 

His fingers brushed over the worn spine of a title he knew well.  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . The giant squid used to be his favourite. He chuckled at the irony of it and slid the book out from its spot.  Why not? I could do with a little fiction.  The book was predictable, the ending set, and nothing in it would come to life. Well, not the book characters, at least. 

It wouldn't do anything to help with the characters, but damn if he cared. It couldn't make them much worse, either. Parker gazed at the dark blue cover a moment longer, then let his arm flop against his side and headed for the cashier. He passed by the familiar man--turned away again, and still wearing sunglasses--and was lost amidst a sea of book seconds later. 

The number of shelves meant the store was small and cramped, but Parker found that comforting. He would be sad to leave it. As he paid, he checked behind him. Not a soul stood there, though a small part of him expected there to. The cashier handed him the book and receipt, and the bell tinkled.  Another customer . 

“Thanks, have a nice day.” He flashed a grin before he left. 

On the way out, he did not pass anybody. The chill air was sharp against his skin once more, punishing him for the soothing heat inside the bookstore. Parker looked up the street and saw the retreating back of the familiar man heading briskly towards the intersection. Not another customer, after all.  



End file.
